Hey- learn to take some criticism, would you?
Posted on 04/25/2005 12:58:27 PM PDT by leepbutler
Some people argue that for various reasons, they are the sole proprietor of the memories of past leaders and heroes, who we memorialize with our actions and our words as we live our lives in the hope that we somehow carry on the tradition of those mentors.
Take, for instance, Ron Reagan Jr. He seems to implausibly believe that the entirety of his father’s lifelong endeavors from all the events of which President Ronald Reagan was historically magnanimous, to the legacy he created through ideological principle and spiritual encouragement are exclusive only to him. Any recognition, explanation, or promotion of Reagan philosophy by anyone other than Ron Jr., he unequivocally denounces.
As if the rest of us just don’t have the where-with-all... in the same manner that he does... to fully understand his father and appreciate what he stood for ideologically, simply because we weren't children of President Reagan.
The same thing holds true for John F. Kennedy and ditto for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Democrats... and those Presidents' family members for that matter... treat those leaders' philosophies and ideologies the same way. FDR, his policies, and his memory is regarded as being ‘off limits’ to the rest of us. It’s how the inanity of the ‘third rail’ of politics to describe possible legislative adjustments to Social Security was generated.
A recent column by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert accentuates this very attitude. Upset that the anniversary of FDR’s death wasn’t honored more than it was, he wrote, “His (FDR) goal was ‘to make a country in which no one is left out’. That kind of thinking has long since been consigned to the dumpster. We’re now in the age of Bush, Cheney, and Delay, small men committed to the concentration of big bucks in the hands of the fortunate few.”
This is the same incessant mendaciousness that the left has spewed since the first day President Bush took office and is as stale as week old coffee dregs. Every nuance of the President’s political policy has been rife with ‘egalitarian ideals’, especially in the advancement of freedom for everyone.
The very purpose of Operation Iraqi Freedom was to bring ‘egalitarian ideals’ to the Iraqi people and the success that was achieved there has now spread throughout the Middle East so that his philosophy of human equality through social, political, and economic freedom has not just been limited to one country... not even only America as with FDR... but the world!
So how exactly has it been ‘consigned to the dumpster’?
It’s nothing more than a petty tirade when he complains about, ‘small men committed to the concentration of big bucks in the hands of the fortunate few’. Mr. Herbert’s salary surely isn’t small in scope, so does that relegate him to the ‘fortunate few’ helped by those ‘small men’?
Besides, that’s specious fodder liberals dole out every other week while they either completely ignore or intentionally belie the positive economic news that often goes under-reported in the liberal media. Americans of every demographic have benefitted from the fantastic economic expanse that has taken place since President Bush took office.
Herbert continues as he alludes to FDR’s ‘fireside chat’ State of the Union speech in 1944 in which he proposed ‘a second Bill of Rights’. Much in the same way liberals misconstrue the Bill of Rights in the Constitution; where they assert specific rights are given to Americans instead of the intended purpose of limiting government control over those rights, he promotes a credence for FDR’s ‘egalitarian ideals’ that doesn’t seem to exist.
Let’s look at a few of the ones he chose. “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.” Liberals profess he meant the government should give these things to people. Yet, having the right to work and earn money doesn’t mean a person is supposed to be ‘given’ them, it simply means they should exist for anyone to participate in if they so choose.
Also, having the ‘right’ to a job to earn money is only accessible if a business has the capability to be successful thereby creating the job a person has a ‘right’ to employ. The only form of government that has existed mandating employment was called Communism and Ronald Reagan was the catalyst for it’s destruction. Sorry about that, Ron. The truth will set you free.
The same rationalization holds true for all the other ‘rights’ FDR proposed as he addressed the nation. Being allowed a ‘right’ only means you have been given an opportunity. Impediments can be or have been removed from the path of your advancement towards participating in those rights.
You have the ‘right’ to cut the grass in your yard... in most places. Do you have to have the President to mandate it for you so you’ll know that you can? What about brushing your teeth? Why can’t we get our legislature to mandate that we have the ‘right’ to not have to listen to vile lyrics spewing from the loudspeakers of unattended cars at the gas pumps while we soak up a few more gallons of fossil fuel from existence?
It’s just political rhetoric. Liberals continue to use that sophism to accomplish among Americans what they charge conservatives with doing through the War on Terrorism and that is to ramp up the fear factor for political gain.
Social Security is a perfect example. Liberals tell Americans that they have the ‘right’ to Social Security checks when you retire, while never explaining how they also allowed themselves the ‘right’ to spend your collected Social Security revenue on more and bigger social programs while denying you the ‘right’ to have access to some of your collected earnings to save exclusively for yourself and your family!
Herbert then turns on President Reagan by quoting a historian who said Reagan attacked Medicare as, ‘the advance wave of socialism’. In simplistic terms socialism is the governmental confiscation of a person’s earnings so it can be distributed as that government sees fit throughout its’ society. Sounds like Reagan was right.
The last conservative on Herbert’s attack list is Vice President Dick Cheney. “He’s one of the leaders of the GOP gang (the members should all wear masks) that has executed a wholesale transfer of wealth via tax cuts from working people to the very rich.” Transferring anything, in this case wealth, means moving something from one to another. Tax cuts are reductions in the tax burden of a person who pays taxes. All working people who received tax cuts earned more money because they paid less taxes. Where exactly did this supposed ‘transfer’ take place when working people were allowed to keep more of their money?
Hello?
That echo you hear is intellectual vacancy on the part of liberals.
Then Herbert did what most liberals do when spinning their rhetoric by destroying his thesis through a back-handed attempt to denounce conservatives. Herbert writes, “Roosevelt was far from a perfect president, but he gave hope and a sense of the possible to a nation in dire need. And he famously warned against giving in to fear.”
Fear was the biggest residual created by FDR’s speech, whether it was intended or not and liberals have raised fear mongering to the nuclear meltdown level as they constantly work to propel their agenda forward. The very purpose of Herbert’s column was to promote fear of the hated conservative.
He even admits it himself, “The nation is now in the hands of leaders who are experts at exploiting fear, and indifferent to the needs and hopes, even the suffering, of ordinary people.” Are any of you ‘ordinary people’ scared yet?
President Bush should just give a press conference and say with a saddened expression, “I feel your pain,” and forget all that nonsense about cutting taxes and expanding freedom and formulating road maps to peace and fighting terrorists.
Then liberals could no longer allege that he’s ‘indifferent’ to the ‘needs and hopes’ of ‘ordinary people’.
Is it just me or is this author super long-winded?
FDR has long since been revealed to be an opportunistic leftist who almost got away with destroying the country. JFK was so addled with drugs it's a small miracle he didn't blow-up the world in 1962. The list goes on...
I was just getting ready to type up a reply that politely pointed out horribly written this article is. Oh man, it's bad. A classic example of overwriting.
Indubitably
Hm..... I see a DFU song in this, just from the title alone. Perhaps "I.Q. Wasteland" from The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" (yes, that's what Pete Townshend says the correct spelling is supposed to be).
I am clueless about that song.
Check your FRmail.
It is not you. Ron Reagan Jr. is a worm. That is enough.
You're right. Next time I'll make it shorter... and write slower... so you can keep up.
Wow sorry- guess I shouldn't have criticized you. My apologies.
ahh, 'scuse me?
little ronnie is one of the last persons on earth to 'appreciate' what Reagan stood for.
Clearly, little ronnie didn't get from his father what he so sorely needed - some good whups up side the head
LOLLOFLHHO
little ole lady laying on the floor laughing her hiney off
Hey- learn to take some criticism, would you?
It appears to me that you have made the same mistake I made - I didn't notice that this was a vanity, and the article was well enough written that it didn't arouse any suspicions that it wasn't professionally written.Lee, I know that criticism isn't easy to take, and I don't agree that it was called for. But as I note above, there is consolation in the fact that they wouldn't have criticized it as much, most likely, if the writing had been worse.
You're exactly right, cIp. If this had been more obviously a vanity piece, I wouldn't have jumped on it as hard. It's well organized and seems to have been edited quite a bit, which gives it a professional gloss, so I just assumed it was written by a pro and judged it by that standard. Like you say, if it had been written less well, I would have adjusted my standards accordingly and said "well, this is pretty good for a regular guy".
Lee, my apologies for being so mean. When you put a piece of writing out there, it's like exposing a part of yourself, and the last thing you want is a punch in the gut. A professional would deserve a punch in the gut, but you didn't. Sorry about that.
But if there's a silver lining here, it's that you've been confronted with some honest criticism, and there's value in that. It's like finding out that you've got a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth. My opinion is that your piece of spinach, metaphorically speaking, is a tendency to be too clever and wordy with your language, at least judging from this piece. It's like Paul Simon said in one of his songs (I've forgotten which), "if you want to be a great writer, you need a humble pen". You seem capable of thinking good thoughts and then putting them together in an organized fashion. That's probably 70% of it right there. Now you just need to streamline your language some.
There's a great book out there called On Writing Well by William Zinnser. He has an excellent philosophy of writing that centers on simplicity and clarity and humility. He's a fine writer himself and the book is an excellent read. IIRC, he says that one of the last stages you pass through on your way to becoming a good writer is the wordiness stage, where you actually overwrite because you can. It's like you start off underwriting, then you go through the overwriting stage, then the pendulum swings to the middle and that's when you get good.
My advice is: don't let this episode discourage you. Instead, keep on trucking on, refine the raw material that you clearly have, and then one day you can get your revenge on all us jerky critics by waving a killer article you've written in our faces.
When you write a vanity this is the kind of response you dream of:To: marronmarron freepmailed a modest reply, and apologized for the length of the piece (it is really long), saying that every time he tried to shorten it it got even longer - so he finally decided to post it before it took over his whole hard drive!This is a vanity?
No way. It is polished professional work, tight as a drum, a clarion call.You put up the source link of this piece this minute!
10 posted on 01/21/2004 3:30:29 PM EST by conservatism_IS_compassion
On the subject of criticism, I recall the time my daughter was criticizing my son over something or the other, and trying to get my support. I finally took her outside to talk it over. She said, "Dad, don't tell me that you don't know I'm right about this!" I explained that that was not what I was there to talk about. The issue was the fact that I try to abide by the Dale Carnegie rule,
Don't Criticize, Condemn, or Complain. This is not an easy rule to follow, believe me. In the example above, my daughter was right - what she was saying was true. It was hard not to say so. But what she was right about was not a principle on the same level of, "Don't criticize, condemn, or complain." Dale Carnegie explains that Benjamin Franklin had a mentor who brought him up short on that very point, saying, "Ben, you are impossible. Your opinions have a slap in them" for everyone who disagrees with you.
Franklin asserted in his autobiography that he had disciplined himself assiduously since then, and that he dared assert that it had been years since a word of criticism had passed his lips. In that spirit I once told my mother, "I don't criticize" - and my wife chimed in, "He doesn't!" That was a proud moment for me, for her to say that. Who else would know, if not her?
The natural question is, if you don't criticize how do you influence people? The answer, according to Carnegie (and others) is, "Give honest, sincere appreciation." Surprisingly, that is hard work too. Everyone goes around doing what they think is right, so inevitably any individual you meet does a lot that in fact is right. The trouble is that, exactly because everyone does try to do what's right, we tend to take every individual's good points for granted. Isn't that what he's supposed to do?! Well, yes - but you have no right to take it for granted! For him, it did take effort!
Giving appreciation has to be honest, and it has to avoid patronizing the person you are talking to. If it wasn't for that, it would be easy. But if you meet those criteria you will end up saying things that people will remember fondly - will remember you fondly for saying - for the rest of their lives. As witness the example above, when my wife said, "He doesn't!" And I suppose the takeaway from that example is, look at the person's weaknesses for evidence that they are trying to do better - and if you can cite any evidence of that, point it out.
Carnegie does give us some leeway, though. "If you must criticize, this is the way to do it." And the two points he gives that I remember are
- Begin in a friendly way, and
- Praise before criticism.
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